A 27-year-old man was arrested this week after police said they caught him using a sledgehammer to smash an Iwo Jima statue in Quantico, Virginia.
Officers with the Prince William County Police Department responded around 10:13 p.m. Wednesday after someone reported property being destroyed near the Marine Corps Base Quantico main gate. When they got there, they found a man, later identified as Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano of Stafford, actively damaging the statue, according to police.
Officers said one of the depicted soldiers’ heads had been removed from the sculpture, and the department estimated the overall cost of the destruction runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
According to the police report, officers detained Maldonado Soriano at the scene without any struggle. He was charged with felony destruction of property, trespassing with intent to damage property, and felony injury to a monument.
He is currently being held without bond, and his court date is still pending.
The statue he is accused of attacking is not just any piece of roadside art. It is a Felix de Weldon sculpture that sits at the main gate of Marine Corps Base Quantico, modeled on the famous photograph of Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945. The monument is one of the first things drivers see coming up Route 1, and it has been a target before, including a 2012 incident when vandals spray-painted a pink line around its base.
The arrest lands in the middle of a broader push by the Trump administration to crack down on people who deface war memorials and monuments.
In August, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office charged a woman with two felonies after she allegedly vandalized the World War II Memorial on the National Mall. Pirro said the charges carried penalties of up to ten years in prison.
“Vandalizing our World War II Memorial is a despicable attack on a sacred monument honoring the Americans who fought and died for our freedom,” Pirro wrote at the time. “We will not tolerate this kind of criminal activism, and we will ensure that anyone who desecrates a veterans’ memorial is held fully accountable.”
The Trump administration has reinstated an executive order directing federal prosecutors to pursue anyone who damages a monument to the fullest extent of the law.
